And The Fingers Linger Here
by Kiasarene
Summary: Cannibalism in the form of second hand inheritance. When Sakura wakes, the hand squeezing tightly over the scream threatening to jump from her throat feels inhuman in strength, and she realizes she must let go before she breaks her own jaw.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This is certainly one of the most ambiguous and paradoxically planned out stories I've ever written (and one of the few I've ever published) and I won't pretend this will make much sense until the moment of it's conclusion. **Information on the situation is slowly revealed as the story goes,** though still I'd like to push that a.) I gave up reading the latest of the Naruto manga chapters recently, b.) this story is set post the manga anyway-even if it never ends... and c.)just for back up, it's slightly AU. Even so, I hope people who love mysteries, angst, romance, and solving puzzles will enjoy it and not find the twists too easily discernible, or clues too difficult to pick up on. Any and all feedback is desired and welcome :)

* * *

><p>And The Fingers Linger Here<p>

_{Cannibalism in the form of secondhand inheritance.} _

**Chapter one: Present**

* * *

><p>Of the letters she sent Naruto over the last weeks in Suna, Sakura remembers most one she wrote with the intention of a confession. She remembers it most- with steely shame and tenderness alike, same as she cradles incoming mail in her hands- because she can remember writing that she felt lied to( What a ridiculous sentiment on her part, an atrocious accusation).<p>

It 's ironic it's the one letter Naruto never sent a reply for.

In the time of her return she inquires as they have breakfast in their quarters, sunshine wafting it's way through the windows and onto the corners of the green painted wood of the table. Naruto's servants bring in eggs, warm and liquid in appearance. They have toast- because they've never been traditional. Hands in the lengthy strands of her bed hair, she asks him cautiously why he never penned a reply. She is careful- she does not mention the contents of the letter.

He contemplates a forkful of food and watches her funny, brows knitted half way low, one up high, corners of his mouth pulled crooked. It hits him a great insult she'd believe he'd ignore any of her letters.

" _I always wrote back,"_

She smiles, laughs, and her hands come out of her hair. _" I know."_

She realizes he never got the letter.

{x}

Sakura cannot describe the release she feels when she arrives, drenched and numb at the door of Naruto's office in the folds of a storm. She can, but will _not_ describe the unintentional, but not unexpected little bits of panic that flit through her system when Shikamaru first opens the door for her, shifting the weight from one shoulder heavy with her things, onto his broad back, only to hesitate halfway and remember the room is empty. Her hands close tightly over air for several seconds, _homesick_ and clutching for a life line. They have come so far just that day, and the muscles at the base of her neck have long tensed; her legs ache to run a good mile- and then buckle into a bed. The heat in the desert they crossed was unbearable, but the chill of the rain now is painful like a drill to the marrow of her bones. A little seed of horror lays buried in the back of her mind, and it frets over flesh matters, wonders if she is still blood and skin, and the cold hasn't turned her to stone or porcelain.

" Meeting, Meeting," Shikamaru sighs and steers her away from the door. Sakura notes the beginnings of a scruffy beard on his chin, and familiar dark, tender circles below his eyes that probably mirror her own. The hand he levels at the back of her neck feels heavy and foreign, a wary force. She is tired now- they both are, and that's why she's willing to admit that even as she has outranked Shikamaru Nara long ago, both in the eyes of the village and by Naruto's side, he continues to feed and collect a feeling of authority. Behind those flat brown eyes math is happening, politics are getting tried like the paper work she and Naruto will argue over in his office when things are the way they're supposed to be. As they walk Sakura makes sure to lift her chin high, and quicken her pace enough to stop him from touching her. She feels like a prisoner. She frowns at him- she tries to make it humorous: "You're hands are cold,"

(Technically, his hands _are_ cold. Except she's just as cold, so really, truly, she can't physically feel _shit.)_

He shrugs. Sakura is smart enough for him to get along with fine- they've been friends the most part of their lives. When she was younger she'd have enjoyed his company better. Six months ago she'd have enjoyed his company better. Now they're both cold, wet, grimy, and sun burnt all at the same time, and Sakura's trying not to think about it, but she's in a different place than she'd always thought she'd be.

There is a meeting taking place in the round room a hallway across, and as they near the sound of Naruto's voice( he never really grew out of the scratchy tones, but now that he's older it's more of a husk) bounds into the hallway. A lone masked guard stands outside the closed door. He's no one she knows- newly recruited into ANBU ranks in her absence perhaps. As they approach he turns his porcelain masked face their way, stance steady. Sakura takes a shaky breath of anticipation. Her arms are stiff with cold and the soaked scrolls she's carried halfway into the village have begun to fall apart and stick to her skin. Leaky ink drips onto the floor. Inside muffled voices argue back and forth in aggressive crackled tones as only those of the aging and wrinkled can. She thinks she hears Naruto laugh. She hopes she does. Naruto is at once ten times easier to move through when he is happy or amused. She can smell the grey smell of antique and dust-it's particularly pungent in the coolness of the air.

" There's a meeting in progress, miss," The guard speaks in reply to her inclination toward the door. It is not until Shikamaru comes into view and the guard realizes who he is that he moves aside . He does not recognize Sakura. She wonders what the name _Sakura Haruno_ means to new ears. Eyeing the guard she proceeds to turn the knob of the door slowly, but stately, bothering to offer the pretense of giving a damn what the hell is going on at the other side. Shikamaru gives her room.

"-suspicious-"

"No motive…"

"Impossible,"

"BIASED!"

"He's been _fucking _her-"

"How dare you-"

She finds out what Haruno Sakura means to new ears- and old ones.

"**She's here."**

The door creaks open, and the bickering comes to a stop. Sakura digests the last of what she's heard, and imagines grimly what it is she must look like- discolored and numb in the face, burnt and scabbing everywhere else. Her hair is wet and stuck against her skull, stringy against her shoulders. Wet sand and mud alike stick to her clothes and shoes. Behind her she imagines Shikamaru's uncomfortable expression, the vague horror at the corner of his mouth as he realizes they should have waited. _What a drag_, she wishes she could say. Tease him. Instead she lets her eyes roam the room, let's them gawk at her before she sets a solid foot in the room. When she catches sight of Naruto, she feels an alien warmth ignite in her chest. A plan unrolls inside the planes of her mind, and on the outside, she fathoms her eyes might be glowing green- which is good. Glowing equals healthy, because no one's seen the things gone wrong in labs.

"Sakura-chan,"

Naruto looks the least like he'd been able to laugh any time within the same hour, and she realizes she must have been hallucinating. The color in his face is pale, and his expression is a knotted one of frustration slowly morphing into one of surprise, then liquid guilt. The affection comes tied with his frowns and the furrowing of his brow. Rainy days are not for Naruto. They are not for him. She reckons she can make this better- she can make things feel right, warm, dizzy and hopeful like the summers they where thirteen. No. _Better_, even. She just needs a bit of alcohol. He just needs a distraction.

" Hokage-Sama," Its not to do with her plan, but she makes sure she forgets to smile as their eyes meet, and keeps her head high even as she bows towards the council members. The elders who spit newfound venom at her name huff offended- the younger seem hurt. This is honestly not what she'd wanted. She'd come for warmth, and a home to come back to but she'd be a fool to think it'd be that way after everything was over. She is not a fool. She lets the eyes here search her for signs of despair but stands tall, insulted. She has done nothing worth their spite, her stance will tell them- except trust those who will not return the favor.

"…Meeting adjourned." Naruto's command is choked somewhere in his throat. Silence. Her hands twitch in their wet gloves. It takes a second time and a hard glare to get people moving out the door. Shikamaru stands near nailed to the threshold, an arm out the room to gesture into the hallways.

" Good afternoon," he greets the crowd in great monotone, eyes flickering between Naruto and Sakura. As the last person shuffles wearily through the door, he closes it with emphasis, a thud in a room otherwise devoid of noise. Sakura stands near him, pale beside her damaged, burnt skin. Shikamaru fathoms she wears the look of a blue- bloated drowned corpse, her hair flat and thin looking-tangled. Her spine stands so straight facing Naruto; rigid like muscles just into rigor mortis.

He can't see her face from where he stands. He expects livid green eyes. The face she is making, whatever it is, seems enough to make Naruto's face drop defensively- shamefully. He has seen her scold him before- it's a lifestyle; no options, but this time she doesn't lift a fist to his face. Her shoulders twitch here and there- shivering. She does not speak, and the air in the room seems to have stopped circulating- gone stagnant.

He watches- deliberates. Does the math thing. He doesn't expect her to make a bee line for the warmth of Naruto's surprised arms. Her own arms full of damaged scrolls leaves inky trails of melting ice across the floor. When their bodies collide the scrolls fall torn onto the antique carpet beneath their feet.

_Breathe, breathe- _she breathes in his scent, the smell of home and smooth live things; trees and leaves and forests. Shikamaru does not know her.

The heat of him meets her immediately even through the cloth of his robes; for what is Naruto if not the eternal heat of her world? She is tired, different than she's ever been, and though paranoid, she discards the watchful eyes of herescort. she sinks to find shelter. She dares not feel the wave of intrusion. Naruto feels the eyes run races over them both, imploring and awaiting decisions. She can feel the tightening in his chest already.

" I'm sorry," There is a rumbling beneath the hot skin of his throat as he speaks past the wet mess of her hair. Sakura buries deeper, eyes closed, and feels his breath constrict at the strength of her embrace. _1, 2, 3,_ she counts. She lets go.

When her eyes have opened again they meet four inquiring others. Shikamaru watches them both from across the room, her pack still slung across his shoulder. Naruto's hands grip her forearms, a slack cross between a smile and a frown fighting for room on his face. Her lips _(she licks them and notes they are as ragged as they've been in the last six months_) twitch for a makeshift smile. Several seconds of tangled silence later, Naruto still settles for a tight lipped expression, his blue eyes growing hard. Sakura does not miss the darting of his eyes to the document she knows sits among the things at his desk. She can almost see it, she thinks, redly stamped with the familiar seal of the Kazekage. She wishes she could see the sake.

Naruto's hard thumbs trace circles over the cold flesh of her bared arms. The temperature away from his body is unbearably cold. This is not what she wanted. Home needs to be warm.

" Are you okay?"

The smile fades, but a warmth can be found again. Her joints are stiff from the cold journey outside but steadily she reaches for the skin of his cheeks, and rejoices in the feel of both their skin: calloused but human. She releases sighs of relief. Things can't be different, because they've been doing these things their whole lives, or at least the parts that matter.

" Did you get any stupider?" Even this tired the words are familiar in her mouth, and she's almost surprised real anger spills with them. She feels the wetness cling to her neck through her hair and shivers, then thinks: She wants to hit him for ever having her sent away. But the thing is, Naruto needs a face, because masks- masks are not for him, his pretty blue eyes. She can understand this even now. He is warm, and he's really all she's got this time- just like when they first started, all grown up. If she hits him bones will break. She mustn't break what's left of them.

Naruto makes a face, hurt, equally agitated, but his eyes soften; jelly like, like water.

The sound of her pack landing carelessly on the hard wood floor near the door and a sharp sigh from Shikamaru signal he is done for the day. They turn to see the tips of his fingers out in a lazy wave before the door closes behind him. In the hall, he trudges frowning.

Sakura's eyes do linger a second longer, because she is thankful he'd come to fetch her and not left her alone with Naruto's gaurds, waiting chin high, with a thousand untrusting eyes at her back. Thankful he'd come to be steely at a foreign trial and save a fragile balance from collapsing. But a shimmer in his hazy brown eyes doesn't do well with her either. The trip back was awkward. Shikamaru is not stupid, and the worst part is he's sure she's not either. She remembers he has contacts the same she remembers writing letters to Naruto and meeting Temari halfway into the falconry. _He only doesn't ask,_ she realizes, _because he'll be too careful to_.

" Are you okay?"

Lets try that smile again, then?

"Yeah," she's good at making it sound obvious, making him sound stupid. _Yeah,_ she smiles, and it hurts the corners of her eyes though her lips don't crack and bleed this time around. She breathes, and there's energy running somewhere, and she needs to get where it wants. She breathes inside, outside, and their fingers twine. Her lips find the corner of his jaw. Well enough. She thinks of the sweet liquid waiting to burn it's way into them both; it's no fun being drunk alone.

This in mind, she laughs when he murmurs _sorry, _and sounds both horrified and angry at what he's let happen. She laughs. He looks like he might cry.

When their lips touch she's glad Shikamaru is gone, and she presses hard against Naruto's mouth, feels her coldness take a little bit of his warmness. His kisses are gentle, friendly, but she's waiting out for the force of the arms around her to push her down hard. Remembering his expression of concern she knows it might take long- hours. He's stupid for wanting to cry. She needs to show him she's fine. When they part for air she'll smile again, and she will seem un-phased, and the world will be good, and she will be good in it's best sense, and she will dig for the sake hidden somewhere in Naruto's desk drawers( _some traditions will never die,_ she can remember Tsunade say).

She will span this days if she can, and they will fornicate like rabbits, drink and sleep like desperados. When she wakes in the morning they will be warm and fleshy, and too hung over to recall any dreams. It'll be a blur.

{x}

Naruto will think on it later, when they sit in his office signing papers on her days off and sharing coffee like they had a thousand times before. She'll smile and it will be just a little bit off when she leans over to give him his stern good morning kiss, and her pink hair- longer than it's ever been- tickles the sides of his face. He wonders what _this_ is because they're not lovers, and he tries not to wonder why they stay locked in the first week, sleep deprived and happy, red eyed, and dizzy with heat, pointing at pigeons perched on rooftops through the glass wall in his office. But then someone walks in, and they've been up to it again, so they enjoy some furious scolding on behalf of the elders, before they hurry home into bed, rustled and harboring makeshift desire for each other. He does not suspect.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** This is certainly one of the most ambiguous and paradoxically planned out stories I've ever written (and one of the few I've ever published) and I won't pretend this will make much sense until the moment of it's conclusion. **Information on the situation is slowly revealed as the story goes,** though still I'd like to push that a.) I gave up reading the latest of the Naruto manga chapters recently, b.) this story is set post the manga anyway-even if it never ends... and c.)just for back up, it's slightly AU. Even so, I hope people who love mysteries, angst, romance, and solving puzzles will enjoy it and not find the twists too easily discernible, or clues too difficult to pick up on. Any and all feedback is desired and welcome :)

* * *

><p>And The Fingers Linger Here<p>

_ {"Look- "he says, grips her bones and makes her touch._We're the same.}

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><p>Chapter Two: Summer, day 1 six months before.<p>

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><p>The first letter of the week goes well forgotten in later times, when only doubt swells at the sore back of her throat, bubbly like sugary acid. She pauses coldly in thought as she writes it, not because she is unsure (she knows <em>exactly <em>what she wants to say- scream into his face) but because she knows he might scream back, or worse, plead. She contemplates who she is now, and scribbles out the "fuck you" and settles for a steely review, greeting, and farewell. Hyuuga style. _Theres'lotsofsandit'sniceheresincerelyyourssakura. _The letter she receives in return reads: _It's not fucking new years._ Her pen flies to shed angry tears she hasn't shed since she was a whiny, stupid, girl. But all she can write are gray words, her face slack, pen gripped tightly:

_There's too much sand. What are you doing to me Naruto? _

But then that one has to go too. She's a grown up. She knows what politics mean.

She doesn't mention colors.

{x}

The first time into the desert she had fears too, but they differed in that she was younger then (now it's twenty-one going on a hundred and three) and the things running through her veins where pumped by a fresh heart. Adrenaline has coursed through her veins like shrapnel of the people she loved and strength has coiled at the pit of her stomach and flowed freely from her finger tips. Now she eyes the dunes with sinking paranoia beneath a burning sun, running a _cold_ sweat in over a hundred degrees. Sand scratches at the insides of her shoes, rubbing further at the smoothly calloused calves of her feet. The desert heat comes in from all directions in a likely depiction of true inferno- the sand emits waves of heat as they trudge through it, and the sky offers only hot breaths of air and scalding light that touches the bared, light skin of her arms and shoulders until they are raw and blister.

Her brisk trek across the desert is careful, but not full of purpose the same as it was the first time. She contemplates a fake limp every fifteen minutes, just to find a way to get herself some time. Slow the hours, drag the time. But this is a futile attempt; the ANBU flagging her at all sides watch attentively, oblivious to her temper, feeling self-important of their mission. Their pace is quick- as quick as possible over sand- automatic, pretentious. She wishes she could stop them, trudge slowly behind. Make them stop looking so damn proud. There are six of them- a number overdone on Naruto's part, and all of them stand stick straight, like twigs: snap, snap, snap.

In truth, they watch her with shiny admiration, and when they speak to her she feels old, like her role as a student has long been reversed, and now she takes the title of master. She's not cruel by nature so she laughs with them kindly, and when they stop for meals she still sits with them, passes canteens around like they are children, and she is their mother, when they're supposed to be able to risk their lives for her. But she alienates herself from their reverence, and they don't even see it. At night she assuages her throat, sore from forced laughter around the camp fire, with honey and lemon concoctions from her pack, and thoughts of home. In the morning she's always first to wake and greet the guard on late shift, a slight girl with a white mask in the shape of a valiant bird- she gives her most beguiling smile then talks about the weather_(dry again, sand again, I think I see a pattern)_ and no one suspects that she lies, hair splayed and grainy with sand in her tent every night, eyes trained only on the flack material of her tent , and tries to ignore the tightening of her jaw and the quick thumping of her pulse in her ears when she thinks she hears mechanic wood clanking over dunes.

They spend four nights in the desert like this, in-between liveliness and tired eyes, and when the time does come, Sakura has cut herself away from her bright eyed followers enough that when she thanks them gently for their services, it still feels like Naruto has tossed her tenderlessly into the barren city that is Suna. She is determined to go in and get out.

And all of it-It's all because Naruto wouldn't send the Kazekage some third rate medic-nin. Village Politics are difficult, dealing with foreign allies even more so,(She has good firsthand experience sitting in Naruto's office for hours, explaining things over and over again)but she knows the offer runs deeper than a sign of political loyalty; It's genuine affection on his part for a friend. She momentarily wishes Naruto couldn't do that to people, enchant them, change them and mark them with his sunlight so they'd never forget him. She forgets being scrutinized and tested, the aspiring eyes of her guards, getting hailed a professional, a sage, and remembers being twelve and jealous that Naruto could do that, and that she and Sasuke could never stop him. She's doing it for him, because he commands her as kage, and asks her as her closest friend.

So she walks briskly, feeling dryer than a dying raisin, all secret business, pink strands of hair sticking to her sweaty forehead, into the desert metropolis, into the towering Kazekage's mansion, where she rendezvous with someone's receptionist and she is asked to wait. There, indoors, where the room is cool, and an ocean of sand does not fill the vast majority of her sight, her anxiety subsides as she takes a seat in a bland wooden chair in the corner of the room and sighs. Her skin once smooth and milky has taken much abuse from the sun, and her hair, even piled high at the top of her head in a messy up-do, strays and sticks wetly to her neck and face. Fatigue eats at her, and she thinks in distaste how ironic it is to resort to sitting in the waiting room when she's adopted so well to walking through the hokage tower like she owns it. When a robed woman steps through the office door, trying her best to smile at her as she asks her to follow, Sakura gathers her things in the scope of her arms and readies the papers, only to have them sent fluttering across the kazekage's office floor seconds later. She apologizes profusely, and bears a forced smile that stretches her cracking dry lips so it stings.

She'd seemed to have forgotten how _red _Sabaku no Gaara's hair was.

{x}

Sakura remembers well the exchange that lead to her sudden excursion into the desert, and down memory lane. It went something like this:

"Please, _Please,_ Sakura, _Please_"

And the strongest man in the Hidden Leaf Village bent at his knees and nearly kissed her feet. He'd go on too, if she'd let him.

She did not.

Too much changes over the years, and since that terrible year they turned sixteen, an entire lifetime, an era, has taken place- and gone. The best she can remember is a lot of sobbing, fumbling, that lovely inauguration- by then, no one could have doubted him anyway, because if she was twenty-one going on a hundred and three, Naruto was at least a thousand- and late, late, late, nights trying to wash out somebody's blood, even in the evenings, in those sickly white hospital scrubs, before she realized, that was what it meant when things went _right._ So many things happened, she realized she'd cried for all the wrong reasons before. So many things changed, but Sakura's calloused hand still grasped her new hokage's, and Sunday nights she'd be there, she'd be his secretary, his battle strategist, and the first to bring out the liquor if she could. She'd be every god damn piece of his furniture at some point, because it was just the two of them, and they knew it would be lonely from the start, after they'd been done with their third counterpart.

.Done.

She was battle hardened, fierce, the rumor going around in the labs. But Naruto Uzumaki was Hokage. And somebody's girl was dying. Somebody's girl was dying, and Naruto looked at her, and those eyes told her he wouldn't let Gaara lose someone he loved like it'd happened to the both of them. Sakura hadn't even known he'd been engaged, let alone involved, but:

_Her name is Akari, they met three years ago-_ Sakura could care less. She wants to get it over with. She wants to get home. She folds the briefing letter from Naruto deceptively neatly back into it's envelope and tosses it into the pile of all her other things.

Back home green grass grows selfishly, crawling fresh and long over the expanse of anything in it's way, and though she's yet to have tried it, because it's just that sad a way to die, Sakura is sure if she lay out in the village brush for a good long while, it'd start to slip around her limbs and grow right on her. But here in Suna, she can tell, looking at her dull reflection in the mirror hanging in the guest room- the greenest thing she'll see is a glimpse of her own eyes. Seeing the color of her eyes so clearly in contrast with the muddy, blown away colors of Suna brings a feeling of nakedness-exposure into her stomach. She grimaces.

The whistling of a sandstorm sounds on the other side of the steep windows she's made sure stay hidden behind a peculiar array of stark cloth, and grimly, she notes it has been no less than an hour since she arrived. She spurns the mirror then, hopeless and dry, and turns instead to the grand luxurious bed centered along the broad middle wall of the room. She drops like a rag doll there, filthy, taking some twisted immediate joy in the spoiling of the expensive patterned sheets. This is so backwards, so wrong of her immaculate white gloves, her clean cut methodical hands. She is caked with all sorts of grain, all kinds of feelings, but her face, remains unlined and steely, because she's worked for it that way.

Like this, she folds her arms carefully over her abdomen, and plans, thinking diagrams and species- a poison and an antidote. She hasn't met her patient yet, she can't tell the hue of her skin off the bat, take a blood sample, and raise a firm hand to her shoulder and comply the fixing stares with a recited concoction. She's hoping to anything, though, your deity and mine that she can. The scrolls in her pack grew heavier in the desert, and now they weigh tons, and she swears she won't lug that across when it doubles if they don't hold an answer.

But.

But the problem is no one knows what it is-

_How long has it been? How is she fairing? _She's holding notebooks already, and on instinct, fifteen minutes after she'd arrived she'd interviewed faces and eyed the crowd for traitors.

_She woke sickly early the same morning. Didn't wake at all the next-_

_The battle was hard, she even fought so bravely but we've tried everything- _ and the servants- they felt so sincere.

_At least she woke at all- _ The doctors were so lost, they watched with anxious eyes; they are shamed.

_-Chiyo is dead._ It's the kazekage who speaks it, eyes addressed direct, and hair very red. (his mouth is thick and formed around the second syllables of the woman's name, and Sakura remembers seeing Chiyo's corpse,). He had paused before, hesitant, to try the words she certainly knows.

**.**

_We don't have a clue, but she might have known._ Everyone says it, or directs it with their stares.

But no one can say it's a pity she's dead or they'd risk taking the life of their leader, because Chiyo gave her life for Sabaku no Gaara. Sakura thinks this carefully and rounds a careful circle over the following thoughts to get back safely where she started. She makes the journey unharmed.

Her dilemma means, she decides, only one thing, and it means all hopes lie in her ability- heavy on her shoulders.

Little more than minutes later, she bathes(rinses), turns the water to its coldest just to spite the desert, then walks out dressed, immaculate and business like.

She can barely manage a smile now, when she doesn't even have the children, the ANBU officers from before to make her soft and praise her. She only tries to school the tiredness from her eyes, soften her mouth into less stern lines, and opens the door to his office. She's ready to see what he looks like since she last really saw him at sixteen( or was it fifteen?).

This is what she sees:

The kazekage stands over his desk, her recommendation letter in hand, face serene but for the downwards curve at the side of his mouth. Sakura wonders if he could possibly be displeased with her. He might be mildly surprised, when he turns and their eyes meet as she waits at the door. His build is sturdy and much taller than she last remembers, broad in the shoulders like Naruto is now, and what Sasuke might have looked like. It occurs to her this is a grown man, and not a boy, as much as she is a woman, though his face is smooth, clean shaven, no stubble. For a moment she wonders if she should bow- his secretary is coming into the room horrified with her straight back. His fiancée is waiting somewhere in the building, though the thought of seeing this lone figure, handsome, and near expressionless, hold anyone closer than at arm's length, is strange.

"It's best we start quickly."

One last curious glance into his eyes- they are safe, and almost green, like hers.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: It has been FOREEEEEVER... Anyone feel like dropping a line?...Please?

* * *

><p>And The Fingers Linger Here<p>

{_"Nothing." he says,_ _and slides the text book underneath the mountain of her unread mail_.}

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3: Present<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>The first week back goes slow.<strong> There's a lot of warm colors, soft things; things from ages ago, and finger tips placed rightly at the base of his neck. It's quiet when it's not either of them speaking, and the servants in the tower don't say a thing, because whenever they come in to change the sheets, Sakura is rolled in them like some Greek muse, sprawled happy and humming across the sofa, while he lies across those antique rugs, sleeping with her nimble hands in his yellow hair. When the maids come in with breakfast or lunch Sakura rolls her head- hair soft and messy and smelling of soaps now- in their direction and smiles languidly with all the sunshine in the world in her kiss swollen lips, and signals for the coffee table. The maids- they're not so old, the oldest still in her mid thirties-whisper about it later, with bitterness from having their master taken from them, and respect alike, from knowing their rival is such a formidable one. "Even if she did it, " they sigh as they scrub the dishes, do the laundry, "she'd still have been the one."

On the third day back Sakura ambles through the tower hallways in search of morning tea, and hears them in the kitchen, sheets trailing her like an unlikely wedding dress sprinkled in sweat and semen. She stays silent, neatly places the slipping sheets back over her shoulder and tiptoes her way back into Naruto's quarters where she wonders what makes one life more precious than another as she lies across the floor boards in an empty corner of the room.

{x}

"Naa-ru-to," the way she says it is different than Sasuke ever did, and different than she ever did before too, but it works, and Naruto tingles awake, eyes open to low orange rays of light- striped through the filter of the blinds. A clock ticks subtly from somewhere on a wall, the needles split at four o' clock and tapping in junction with the hardness of Sakura's nails on a white mug of coffee.

" Breakfast," Naruto fumbles from his place rolled in pillows on the floor, and groans in appreciation. The floor is hard, but Sakura has been soft, in all the curves of her body, and even the tone in which she speaks with as of late, so he takes it, and has selflessly surrendered the couch, for fear of a scolding, and remembering the coldness of her skin her first day back in his arms.

" Lunch," she corrects, takes a sip from the mug. With a quick glance towards the clock he mouths an 'oh', and reaches for his own mug, still warm atop the coffee table.

"Sleep?" She sets down her drink and ruffles her hair as she stretches, small chest expanding against her camisole as she breathes deep. He yawns, impulsively following suit and climbing into the seat next to her. His joints ache , and his mind, like his tongue, feels thick and fuzzy, exhausted from oversleep. Somewhere in the back of his mind he notes it's a Sunday, no schedule, still a bit chilly, but bathed in spring light. Sakura's foot wriggles at the side of his lap.

" It was good," he hums and turns to her, eyes bleary, and rubs at his face like a child. Sakura watches him with great attention, affection in the turn of her mouth. Her skin seems to glow with the same dizzy halo of whiteness across the room. "Except I slept on the floor. " they frown. " Why'd I sleep on the floor?" he asks pointedly, rubbing at the bare sides of his arms. Wonders where his shirt is. Probably still at the doorway.

Sakura shoots him a caustic glare, takes the last sip of her coffee( he hadn't noticed how much she'd been gulping down) and rolls into his lap with a heavy thud of fabric and skin on the couch, her weight shaking his bones.

" We didn't make it into the bedroom. I called dibs on the couch." She sniffs into his side. He can feel her grinning against his skin, though, breathing slow, pulling him into pace.

Happiness hasn't ever been exactly this way before, bright like the good parts of their childhood, and the awkward parts of being grown up. Things haven't ever been perfect, because they were a little lumpy, and twisted when there were three of them, and when they learnt to get on just the two, it was lonely sometimes, both of them looking to the future, wondering what more was to come. But this foreign buzzing is flowing with bright colors- the green of her eyes, the rose of her hair, and the red lights outside the window glowing like beacons while it rains. The time of Sakura's return has been messy, indoors and cramped, and in-between chasing after her, trying to find some kind of damage in her, like a bruise on a fruit, Naruto has wondered if this is where they're going. He loved her for a long time, a long time ago, and post loving the same person, he ponders whether he and Sakura can love each other not out of necessity but attraction.

"Yeah, I didn't want you to hurt me," he makes a face and maybe his words carry with double sentiments. Angling herself to face him she laughs, eyes beneath her lashes coyly like she's only done recently, impractical, and girlish. " Never stopped you before," she fingers the tawny muscles of his stomach. Naruto's breath catches in his chest, and vaguely he recognizes a dull throbbing in his head.

Oh.

" Sakura, I think we're hung over." He lets his head fall back, and he knows the throbbing is definite. One of the voices in the back of his head squirms like a worm- a maggot or a parasite, telling him it's why he can have this. He is afraid to lose her.

" It's been worse," she scoffs, moves her fingers up his chest. He doesn't catch it but her voice is low, debating. Unsure.

" Okay. I think you're right. You're still _drunk_; you've been giving me eyes the last two days, and let me sleep with you for the last three. It's a fucking record. It's a celebration." it's supposed to be funny, but as soon as he's said it, he kind of wishes he hadn't. Sakura's hands drop into her lap as quickly.

He wonders if this is it, the bruise.

" Are you complaining, Naruto?" Her eyes look to him sharply. He can't tell if she's serious, but if she is, how can she direct so much energy into her gaze, when she's had just as much to drink as he has?

" No ma'am."

It's quiet for a moment, the only noise being their breathing and the ticking of the clock,; Naruto is sure he's fucked up, he's made her leave for so long, and then he's fucked up, but then he feels her round into the crook of his neck, skin scented like sweat and soaps alike.

" I missed you," and the way she says it almost breaks his heart.

He holds her. Guilted, he clumsily kisses the top of her head, remembering what it's like to be innocent, and have a thousand people you'll never even know hate you for something you've never done. This hits home to Naruto, and though it sounds cold, he thinks to himself that what he and Sakura have been missing, what he and Sasuke had, they now share.

{x}

A cold lunch is what they get near late noon, when the needles of the clock have passed five, and the light streaming through the windows has dimmed and grayed. Later, Sakura has showered, her shampoos leaving clean smells in the bed and bathrooms, and she has left to check in at work in the hospital, late in the afternoon like she has everyday back. As he sobers, Naruto is pleased to see her co-workers still practice unquestioning loyalty, and word hasn't gotten around to civilians as of yet. When she comes to him, she hums at the threshold of the door, slips off her shoes while she calls for him. Naruto answers loudly from his place at the kitchenette table where he leafs through legal documents with awkward hands and numb expressions. As he listens to Sakura's returning sounds- the head band falling across the arm of the couch, a story about one of her interns, He eyes the tips of a red envelope at the bottom of his stack of work things, addressed to himself, written in neat, straight lines. He's read Shikamaru's detailed report, and the vulgar grumblings of his council have only barely quieted since Sakura's return, but still- the letter addressed privately-personally- to him, and not his country, pines for his attention now as it didn't at first, waiting for him to lift its papery flap.

Tongue between teeth he pushes it further between the papers. Just as he does, Sakura approaches, bare feet padding soft against the floor boards. " What'cha doing?" her breath is hot against his cheek. The liquid in his spine seems to chill, and he shivers. For a second he's a kid with his hands caught in a cookie jar all over again.

" …I'll never get used to this responsible Naruto. Paperwork on free afternoons? Frightening." She laughs and he feels her hair swing away as she turns. He grunts gruffly, neck strained to follow her as she carries into his room, hand trailing the walls and furniture she passes. Sakura's back is turned to him, and inside his room she can't see him. She imagines his boyish smile on his rounded puppy's face and his big glassy eyes.

At the kitchenette table he's watching her with man eyes with new hollow depths to them, and his mouth curled into an indecisive grin.

Nervously his sight zips between his paper work and the envelope at the bottom of the pile and the open bedroom door.

" I'm going to sleep," He can almost see her lying bent around the sides and left hand over her stomach in _his_ bed. This is something new- this brand of happiness has never been around before. He hopes it never goes away.

Curiosity daunted, he turns out the lights and steps over the floor boards down the hallway into the bed room. His hands move across the spaces she has touched. A trail into a dark place. The little light that there is reflects a friendly pull of her lips.

" Hey there,"

{x}

In the morning there's fresh coffee brewed at his nightstand when he wakes alone. The unexpected sweetness of it shocks him, and he wonders if all his coffee this week has tasted the same, and if it has, what it is someone's been putting in it. The clock at his bedside says 5:00 AM and it's the earliest he's woken in a long time. He scrounges out of bed and stumbles into the kitchen for bottled water, and as he sips from it later, reclining against the arm of a chair, he searches frantically for the sign of Sakura's presence, and unexpectedly finds too many clothes strewn across the carpets and floor boards, heavy with the rank smell of sex and alcohol. He counts the days they've slept away on his fingers. The finished pile of work on the table has shrunk half the size of the new files. Dread travels fast through his veins. He remembers mourning someone and realizes they've been living on an island, a continent in a god forsaken ocean.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N:The Lines! Please drop them ? :D Thank you so much to XxSeikaxX and Tamah for reviewing. It means a lot to know people bother. I dedicate this chapter to you :)

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><p>And The Fingers Linger Here<p>

{ _There are a lot of things people won't admit._}

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><p>Chapter 4: Interview #1<p>

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><p><em>This is a basement room in a large institute. We won't speculate towards it's purpose. We know what this is, it's Konoha's ANBU head quarters. The rooms above are bustling but professional. People move in swift steps, porcelain masks hanging from their finger tips. White office lights wash the walls with a gray hospital harshness. However, this room is dark. The lighting is very dim; only a halo from a gas lamp centered at the plastic table at which the subject sits. There's a photograph set next to the lamp, glossy and reflective of the little light. The subject traces the tips of a finger across the image tentatively- her shoulder's tense visibly, either in fear of the dark room and it's implications, or in blatant worship of the woman in the picture.<em>

_The subject is young. She's new, we can tell, by the vigor with which she works, and the eagerness to comply to the requests of her superiors. She is naïve, and her eyes awash with idolatry of tired ghosts she calls sempai. Her hands are still soft, and though she is capable, she will be limited for her lack of suffering. _

_**What was she like?**_

_The subject responds quickly, fingers pulled back into her lap almost as fast. _

Perfect. Haruno-sama is everything she'd been rumored to be. It was an honor to have the privilege to escort her, _her chin tilts with pride, her voice etched with breathlessness. This is what she believes in- justice, and pride, love, lovelovelove, and trust. This is what she truly believes, even though her thin fingers tremble nervously at the edges of the mask in her lap. She sends no second glances towards the photograph._

_She's fifteen and stubborn too, a little bit like Sakura Haruno at the age, minus the ache, and the bone crushing strength growing in her fingers. She's got that silly smile too, the one that puts unfaltering faith in someone she believes in._

_**Yes, yes, but what was she like? In the desert?**_

The desert? … It was hot, _ her voice grows meek from having stated the obvious. She has a surly, full mouth, and we can tell, as she falters, it is set in thin lines. Her eyes, very round and dark, seem to search for answers in the air by the door._

_With more confidence: _ It was hot. But no one said a thing, though, that's not what we do, right? Then I only got to see her getting there….Shikamaru Nara had her on the way back,

_**Yes? **_

_Her pauses indicate wariness, bitterness at having dirt thrown at her idols. But she's not one to talk back, attack her superiors. She can only defend. _

She was brave and kind, but no one said much to each other because It was so hot. We were afraid we'd want water if we did.

_**Did she seem fine? What was she like? What kind of faces did she wear, what words did she spit? Did it look like she was waiting? Was she waitng?**_

Waiting? _… her eyes seem glossy, teary_. She didn't do it! _She has clutched tightly to the edge of the table, sent the lamp rattling. The chair she's been sitting in sits turned over on it's back on the floor, it's legs splayed outwards and pointed. She spies the force of our implications with spiraling dread._

She did what she could! She has no reason to have done _that! And the way she says it, she communicates well, a feeling of betrayal, and disgust. How could we accuse our own? Do our values lie in politics or false pride? They do, they do, they do. We send sweet girls like her into battle, rattle them and tug their hair, and make them dream of greatness. We starve them but they don't notice- they are fed with pale visions of goddesses who work in battle, offer them glory in the name of a country that will rape them, blame them and throw them away. _

_But who should this girl fear? It is what she believes, but the belief has been planted by the village, those she eyes with disgust._

_We sit back, patient. This subject is not the only one of it's kind. We have boys and girls who dream out loud seeping through city slums. The subject has been of no help._

_She cries._

_Write it down! We hope to find what we want somewhere else._


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** I'm still alive. :D... You there! Stop frowning!

Thank you **anyone** for being patient. Please commence the dropping of the lines anytime; I would be immensely grateful. Oh, and I also thought it might be useful to hint...there's more than one red head playing the part of a major character in the story.

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><p>And The Fingers Linger Here<p>

_{That high you feel- it's a weakness. There's nothing wrong with saving lives, even when it's done for all the wrong reasons, but the fault comes in giving you the choice. **And there is**_** always**_** a choice.**}_

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><p>Chapter five; Summer, Day 1, six months before.<p>

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><p>The room Sakura is led to is predictably spacious. The walls facing northward are made entirely of reinforced glass, and if she could appreciate the desert scenery, she'd be more inclined to admire the white-<em>never gold here, too strong here<em>- light of mid day coming in past a set of deep purple curtains. Instead her eyes move specifically to focus towards the lavish bed set dead center of the room, head board set up against the wall, tiny person crumpled stiff atop it. A table is set at the bedside- a dozen different glass bottles and ointments, packs of needles, towels, herbs, and a little blue basin filled with aromatic water. That little bulge beneath the crème sheets on the bed-

" She has remained unconscious for the last two days," A nervous man- a nurse, a medic in training, appears at the side of the table. His fingers move restlessly over the tops of the bottles. Sakura watches for tell tale body language.

" We sent for you soon after, Miss Haruno."

Sakura nods, turns to Gaara for confirmation. He, impossibly pale for a desert man, she thinks passively, nods again, expression concrete.

Sakura hums to herself, makes eye contact with the nurse again- watches him jerk about awkwardly and excuse himself. He's harmless. There are more notorious forces at work here- be they natural or man made.

" I'd like to inspect her myself," she lets a thin hand hover professionally over the girl's body, letting him know she will touch her before she begins. Sakura is wary of people with sick lovers; they make it a habit to be often jumpy, unconsciously possessive. But he makes little movement but for a vague inclination of his head.

"Alright…" She begins, gingerly by practice, reaching for the girl's wrist from underneath the sheets. She thumbs the skin over the veins and presses. A dull pulsating bounces off her fingers. Slow and thick, she thinks. Slow and thick like there's something inside, making life thick and sleepy, clotted inside her veins. She relates the muffled sound to the sound of a weak heart, and the pungent smell of poison on the tip of a needle, arrow, machine.

Sakura shakes herself from her sharp nostalgia. Not everything is a venom.

She makes a log, checks the number into a little notebook she fishes from her pocket. " Very slow," she says, only for the benefit of saying something out loud to the man watching her quietly from behind. Next she peels back the girl's eye lids, speckled gray and violet despite what seems to be the darkness of her skin. Her iris has rolled somewhere into the back of her head. Swollen red lines trail the wet whites of her eyes. Trying her best to keep her lips from jumping back over her teeth in alarm, she moves to wrap her thumb and forefinger around the girl's wrist again. An erratic warmth feeds into her skin where she touches the girl. Her arm is heavy in Sakura's hand. She looks back to the bottles set on the bedside table, then to the kazekage. She moves back to check the girl's face. She looks at the eyes again, skirts the girl's lashes with her thumb. They are full and dark. She steps back and opens the girl's mouth. Her tongue is slightly swollen.

Fuck.

Sakura knows she should take a blood sample; she knows she's got her own equipment for it just in the pouch at her hip- she can feel the weight of the needle already, and even though it's cased and covered, she swears she feels it prick her thigh through the material of the bag.

" They've taken samples?" She scribbles into the notebook, avoiding eye contact when she asks the question. There is a sudden chill in the room, and it's stupid of her to feel it, when she's treated so many poisons already, back home, in battle, in court, for research. But the image of the desert behind the enormous glass window is frightening in it's nostalgia. The situation is too similar.

" They couldn't find anything," His eyes bore into hers when she turns and she has to remind herself not to glare. She has the minute urge to laugh. Laugh at herself, and panic, and scream, and laughlaughlaugh.

" She carries obvious symptoms…" She breathes in deep, inhales the image of the girl, then eyes him warily. " She's been poisoned…You knew all along, didn't you? Made you know you'd need an expert."

The sun is coming down in the horizon in the window. An obnoxious ray of yellowing light cuts into the room , dies Sakura's rosy hair white. What she means to do is call him irresponsible. She wants to hurt him for being austere, for being lonely, and quiet, and pale porcelain. The red hair.

This comes across well in her tone, and though Gaara should have taken great offence in what is in truth Sakura's paranoia, her naivety and misplaced trauma, he simply looks to his fiancée, with round glass eyes, and moves his mouth quizzically, almost seeking her approval. " There would have been talk," he says with logic. " Nobody would… someone like her. She wouldn't be a target,"

His words go unsaid; It should have been me.

Sakura's anxiety boils down into curiosity. " Do you know who could have-"

"No."

And he really doesn't.

{x}

Sakura thinks she knows who did it. In her mind she always knows who did it; she's a spectacular detective by default; He did that because he loved her, he did this because he loves her, he did that because it hurt; he did that because he's a monster, one and only. Inhuman, and frightful, and there'll never be somebody quite as twisted or sad-

But the truth is Sakura doesn't know. Half everything she's ever thought was wishful thinking: only one of those boys could really love her. The other one's dead, and oh, he was _stupid. _Stupid Sasuke. That other one, not Naruto, the man that almost killed her, he's a lot more human than anyone likes to admit.

There are a lot of things people don't like to admit.

Sakura doesn't know who poisoned Gaara's fiancé anymore than his clueless medics do. The difference is she couldn't care less, really, and that _she _can at least find a solution. She can think logically in this mad panic. She doesn't give a shit about politics if Naruto's not around, if there's a desert storm instead of spring rain. But she sets open three scrolls on the heavy wood in her reserved private quarters, and starts mashing herbs together on a pestle.

" She's stable enough as of now," she told Gaara. Traced the shape of her brow distractedly. " If you could give me three days…"

Of course, he said. Of course.

{x}

His sister, Temari.

She is a great deal self important, only because she knows this to be one of those universal truths. _Oh what, _she must feel, _Oh what would the world do without Temari? Her brothers, helpless and psychotic, neurotic it seems; her country?_

"I start to peel," Sakura says when Temari asks what she thinks of the city. It's not like that at home, she wants to add. The weather is perfect at home.

" You _are_ so pale," the blond contends, eyes Sakura up and down like she's fourteen again. " Just like Ga-"

" Shika," she interjects, shortens his name on purpose, to create in effect some intimacy that doesn't exist in real life, " Shika is doing well, I thought you should know." She smiles at pretty Temari, much easier pricked than she'd think. It's the weather, so hot. Makes her irritable.

" Oh," She commends, and it's so obvious they have not spoken since they fought six months before. Sakura wonders briefly if Shikamaru still thinks about Temari.

" Thank you, Sakura." And like that, Sakura stands alone by the library window, and frowns at the sand outside. She and Temari, they aren't that different. She isn't supposed to snap at people. Sakura's line of work calls for the utmost professionalism; She doesn't let people die because they don't mean something to her. She's not a politician. You don't run from the gore because it frightens you.

Usually Sakura is kind and quick to comply with her procedures; she works carefully by the book with her healing hands, or throws it with authority when she needs to. Always.

But this is different. The sand dunes make her anxious and the rattling of the sandstorms wracks her consciousness like she's seen consumption wrack the breast of her patients. Something , something, makes her miss Naruto with earnest desire to be comforted. It makes her bitter to be sent away and be kept away. It's not professional, it's raw and ravaged.

The guilt that comes with her healing hands floods her chest, and later at dinner, she promises softly to herself as she sets back the antique medicine text; later at dinner, she'll be civil.

{x}

" I can't tell you how weird it gets," the middle sibling pauses, serves himself a second helping of what is one of Suna's over spiced and wined delicacies. "To see how much you've grown. What's it been, Haruno? Five years?" Kankuro grins at her. He's been especially friendly ever since she was fifteen, and he was almost dead-could have, because- and-

- Well, point being, she saved his life. Since she'd arrived, the day before, he'd made a good amount of noise among the house servants, making sure she was treated well, whilst a quietly watching Gaara gestured for much more orthodox orders from behind him. It could have been comical.

" Six years. I think we can all say something like that," Sakura struggles to put the words on her tongue. The truth is, both Kankuro and Temari look the same as they ever did; granted, taller, stronger built, longer hair, heavier rouge around the lips- but still, an air of pregnant inapproachability hits them like wind form Temari's fan when they stand alone, and during social conversation, they remain awkward in their hopefulness. Gaara. _Kazekage,_ he's beautiful now, easy on the eyes, temper in check, but inscrutable to the end too, Sakura thinks.

"Six years." He says again. Pauses awkwardly as though hoping one of his siblings would rescue the conversation. She tries to find something to say to Temari, but the blonde's face is so blank and smooth- like curdled milk, she can only squeeze through a smile at no one in particular. Kankuro coughs. " You look lovely," and subjects himself to a fate of social malfunction as he lifts his drink to her, a little too quickly, before downing it in total.

"Thank you…" To her right Temari eats gracefully looking all the more as though she has been forced to eat something thoroughly unappetizing.

Then silence and the dingy clanking of dishes. Sakura wishes here for a moment that she had more of that political discipline. It's stupid. Pearls fit for ladies. That kind of thing. But as it is she's only really good at raw damage control( swinging fists at boys, finding leverage with wispy lies) and laughing up barefoot and muddy on the riverbank with Ino. So her eyes round the table of politely disinterested faces and she quells the urge to frown with a sip of her own wine. Alcoholism comes easy to professionals, they say. She opens her mouth to let her lips dry:

" How did you meet her?" the words climb off her tongue vengefully, and inside she cringes. Temari's gaze is on her like some bird of prey, simultaneously a warning and a plea, so protective of her youngest sibling. Because he is so _delicate_, Subaka no Gaara. _Ever since he was a child_.

" …If I may be privy to such information," Sakura catches herself, swallows nervously. Realizes for the first time this could help their investigation.

" That's hardly appropriate-"

"It's fine." Temari is cut off, and Gaara looks from the empty space over Sakura's head to her face. Temari gapes and tries not to scrape at her meal plate with her table knife. The part of Sakura that wants to be home- in her apartment, washing her hair, or writing patient reports in her hospital office- twitches in her cheek , pretending she never promised she'd be good.

" We met two years ago." Sakura nods, sets her hands in her lap. Two years is a considerable amount of time to most people. Long enough to want something from each other that way, she supposes, even though she hasn't wanted anything from anybody that way since Sasuke. " She's young," Gaara, pauses, and Sakura politely takes another forkful of her dinner. His gaze lingers, so she takes another sip of the wine. " Very," Sakura prods him further, eyes cast low, then flickering out to her table mates; there is a moment where they wonder collectively how they can feel so old so fast. The girl can't be a day over eighteen. It's only three years away- but she feels like a child even in Sakura's hands, fragile, and having not seen the things they had. Sakura wonders what it must be like, loving the girl child, sweet and delicate, to someone tired like Gaara. Monster of the desert, they called you once, abomination, were it not for the devil who came before you.

" Very." He echoes, and unwavering even in the face of their sudden nostalgia, continues. " She was meant to be a mansion guard. In training. One of Temari's students." As if on cue his sister nods- solemnly. Women like Temari- they don't like to share.

" …And it just happened…from there." Sakura imbues, her tone deceptively light. Maybe that's the way she wants to treat it, this white shadow of affection no one could have imagined, It doesn't exist to people like her. So she offers a soft apology to Gaara, and notes; she's talking to a ghost about a ghost. So it goes.

The ghost nods. For this long drawn out second, he reminds Sakura of Naruto fiddling with his chopsticks when they were children, unsure of what to do when she had something for him to do- even though Gaara himself barely moves. He holds a fork just over his dish, and his eyes concentrate neutrally across the table, lidded by heavy ginger lashes.

When the next words leave her mouth, she hasn't realized Temari has left the table with a low mumbled excuse under her breath, and Kankuro has begun to call servants to collect dishes. They sit on opposite ends of the long table, alone.

"Do you love her?"

Sakura watches unflinching as he lifts a forkful of food to his mouth for the first time since they'd sat to dinner that night. The conversation is lost to her at the clinking of the china in the servant's hands.

{x}

That night back in her quarters Sakura moves to continue her research, but finds herself flinching away, pushed back into her bed and into her travel sack where she shifts through clothes and equipment for parchment.

Everyone is in control in regards to the desert.

Even though Naruto always loves her like she's the only thing left, he sends her away with confidence, and expects her to return the same. He presides over their home land like it was meant to be, and he knows himself, that when she comes home, he will still love her. Temari knows she will see Shikamaru again. She is tricky but solid, and she will see him again, even if she has to loose a battle- as long as she wins the war. But no one is as in control as Gaara who is so purposefully silent; sure of how he feels, exactly, and moving ahead either way.

Sakura needs control too. Out in the desert her paranoia watches shadows that don't exist move across the sand, and clay hands that should lie in pieces, poison pretty little girls, even if she knows it's not possible. She needs to be sure of something, but she cannot tune her feelings like the others can. So she writes a letter to Naruto, one she'll send later in the week, instead of mixing herbs, and wastes time, knowing that the girl's life rests in her hands.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: I don't know if it shows, but the interchanging chapters- past to present- and so on, with the exception of the interchapters like ch. 4- act as mirrors of each other, either reflecting or expanding on an idea or event introduced in the other. As with this chapter and the previous one.

I won't promise we'll have another update as soon as this one- It was spring break, and this chapter was the shortest and easiest to write to date- but I'll be working hard . Let's blame the evils of AP US History. I know I do. Either way thank you so much to those who favorited, reviewed, and are following the story :) I promise to finish the journey with a bang.

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><p>And The Fingers Linger Here<p>

_{There is a high that comes with holding that knife to anyone's neck, and you can take that, and multiply it by ten, and get the high you feel at saving someone's life. You never think it like a bad thing; makes you sound like an angel. But something makes you tick, and something makes you want, and halfway down the road, saving people, you become immortal, and even in a different way, she has seen that happen, and this is what frightens her most.}_

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><p><strong>Chapter Six:<strong> **present**

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><p>Sunday the rain begins to pour again, after what had been only a short respite. Sakura closes the kitchen window just as the worst of the water begins to hit the glass; huge globulous droplets of water that make a noise like furious tapping when they make contact. She briefly imagines being caught out in the rain, like the first night back with Shikamaru, and recalls the sting of the water falling sharp on her skin. It never rained when she was in Suna. It was summer.<p>

Slowly, she turns to face the rest of her apartment, messy, smelling of dust instead of her bath things because she wouldn't let anyone come in for cleaning while she was gone; she doesn't like strangers rifling through her things- she'd left at least three research papers unfinished before she'd left. Tying back her hair as neatly as possible she walks across the living room, slips into a sweater, and turns off the lights. She sits, knees drawn to her chest on the floor next to the sofa, in the dark, and stares at the pile of unopened mail she dumped unceremoniously on the living room coffee table as she came in ten minutes ago. At the top of the mess there's a stately white envelope with a red seal stamped over it the way she knows the kazekage seals his letters.

She stares and she stares, but the letter won't burst to flames, and he's still there, humming, rattling in the back of her mind.

_You and I,_ he whispers faintly. _YouandIyouandIyouandIyouandIy-_

Sakura screeches once, a growl and a sob simultaneously, before her face grows slack, and her breathing slows. Her eyes wander towards the alarm clock set at her bedside table, just visible through the bedroom doorway. It's still early, only nine am, and she wonders if Naruto has awoken to find she has gone yet. He'll be happy, she thinks, that she's gone back to her apartment for the first time since she got back.

{x}

" You're back," his voice comes muffled from underneath the bed sheets as she opens the house door. She sets her shoes at the entrance, and pauses in the hallway. Their dirty clothes have gone, probably to be washed by the maids, and she carefully notes that means Naruto has been up, called them in, and has likely only just clambered back to bed. She forgets he's got quite the tolerance for alcohol sometimes.

" Yeah. You had the place cleaned, I see!" she calls to him and looks tiredly for any other changes. A silk bag with a change of clothes for her sits on the sofa where they first camped out at the beginning of the week. She loosens the tie, and pulls out a set of pretty blue robes, not at all to her taste. She stuffs it back into the bag, and walks to the bedroom, leans against the doorframe.

" Hey. I went back to my apartment today," she crosses her arms and tries not to let her head loll.

" But you came back so soon," Naruto pulls out from under the covers, looks languid and messy in the dark. " It's a pigsty. " Sakura frowns, and with the least amount of resistance slips off her trousers and her socks, and slips under the covers with him.

" It's lonely." She whispers, and it's not necessarily a lie.

As Naruto holds her, the envelope she's stuffed somewhere between the pages of a textbook weighs heavy on her mind, and somewhere in her consciousness, she expects Naruto to get one too- if he hasn't received it already. This thought has her shoulders stiffen for a moment, and Naruto taking this as sign that she is cold, squeezes her tighter to his chest.

_{x}_

_YouandIyouandIyouandI, Sakura-_

_{x}_

Three hours later she wakes in a cold sweat to find Naruto has left the bed. Frowning, she dips her head into one of the pillows and inhales Naruto's heady scent, holding her breath like she could keep his essence, breathing him in. Naruto, who loved her, who was warm and alive looking. Pushing herself up on her elbows, Sakura listens and distinguishes the furious tapping of the rain on the tower from the buzzing of the shower in the bathroom. She climbs out from the sheets and steps across the wooden floor boards towards the bathroom. The wood is cold to her feet- a sensation she welcomes, to assure herself she's flesh made. The floor creaks under her weight when she stops in the halo of light coming through the cracks of the bathroom door. She can hear the sound of Naruto washing himself as she pushes the door all the way open; the soap bubbles coming down the drain under the force of water. A hot wave of steam hits her face as she walks in, the warm water mingling with the cooling sweat on her forehead. She licks her lips, before she speaks to disprove her nightmares, and what the voice that swims in knots in her head told her in the desert.

" Naruto," She sits on the toilet seat lid and waits for him to respond. Naruto seems to wash the soap out of his hair before he answers sheepishly. " Sakura?"

"What's it like to be hokage?"

There is a pause, and Sakura stands, and walks towards the sink. There is a mirror there. When she looks the bridge of her nose and her cheeks are pink and shiny like rubber. The tender new skin that comes in after a vicious sunburn. Her eyes are a lot greener than she remembers. They don't remind her of anyone in particular. Her mother had brown eyes. Her father was dead before she turned six.

" …Hard." Naruto decides after a short while.

" You're powerful." Sakura intones. She shakes her vision away from her ugly green eyes and traces the pattern on the shower curtain with her fingers.

" You've always been powerful," she adds. " By yourself." She can feel him smile softly to himself, and in the parts of her that are unsoiled, alright, she wants to smile back. She thinks she feels his hand skirt hers on the other side of the shower curtain. She wants to hold him too, the way she had before. " And it's what you wanted."

" It's hard," he amends. " But it's worth it."

_What will this be?_ She thinks, _ten years from now._ What will the history books say? The ancient texts will read about falsified romances and backdoor trades for a girl between monarchs. She's not even something special. "_He's been fucking her…" _ she remembers they said. It's true. How will that read, she wonders, in an academy history book?

Consequences. You can love someone and they can love you back, or you can let someone love you, and love them back for it too. You can love someone and never hear from them again, and you can love nothing and know only ever the backs of your hands and a knife. Career girls are like that, she thinks. She remembers watching girls with political weights on their backs- people like Hinata, and pretty Akari, gray and stiff with rigor mortis now, and maybe even Sakura herself- get suited up for a marriage of convenience to men of power. Love is ineffectual. In the end, she ponders, shrugs out of her sweater, unfastens the clasps of her bra, fear is the motivator. Will you die alone? Will you take what belongs to someone else, or will you take what you deserve, and not die alone? The most vivid encounter with love she remembers is one she represses. And she didn't even love anyone. You cannot empathize with monsters and expect to come out unscathed. Your ego will come looking for you. Show you what he means when he says _same._

The naked woman staring back at Sakura in the mirror now wears a twisted visage. The features of her face blur at the corners of her eyes. It's one of those ridiculous outcomes.

" You still there?" Naruto's voice echoes off the shower walls, behind the curtain. Consequences. Sakura knows love exists. She sees it everytime Naruto looks at her. She saw it back in Suna; in the library. But love is a choice, too. Sakura made a choice, and though it was driven by terror- a thick fear corrosive to her mind even now- it was made for love. She is just sorry it eats at her this way. She is sorry she must sully Naruto too.

" Mhhm," she turns away and smiles, and if she were looking in the mirror now, she'd see how wrong it looks.

" Oh," he laughs. " I was afraid you'd left."

" I'm here," she soothes. "I'm back now. I'm sorry," she means it out of context.

" You never left!" Naruto is thick, but she'll take him that way.

" 'course." She lets loose her hair, leaves the band wound around the sink faucet.

"…So what's it like, then?" She can hear him finishing up, muscles warm and head up towards the water, darkening his hair.

" What?" she slips off her underwear.

" Being a doctor? A medic? Saving people?"

" Oh," she says casually, runs her fingers along the edge of the curtain, takes hold, and pulls back, seconds before she knows he would have shut off the water. It was too cold outside.

" Oh," he mirrors surprised. His big blue eyes are bright under the soggy yellow hair sticking long to his chin and forehead.

" It's worth it," she grins wide, and she's a sight to behold, eyes twinkling and turned up, eye lashes brushing the turn of her cheeks as she steps under the water and wraps her long swan arms around him.

-Like playing god.


End file.
